San Mateo coast delighted Devils Slide is open

Eve Mitchell, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, July 1, 1995

1995-07-01 04:00:00 PDT SAN MATEO COUNTY -- MONTARA - For the first time in five months, weekend travelers are driving to the coast over Devils Slide on Highway 1, heading for a day at the beach, seafood dining and other pursuits.

Motorist started driving on the highway shortly after a ceremony was held to herald its long-awaited reopening Friday morning.

"There is more traffic," said Joe Freitas, manager of a Shell gas station and mini-mart in Moss Beach said Friday afternoon. "Everybody is kind of upbeat."

The reopening of the highway between Pacifica and Montara could not come any sooner for coastside businesses such as the Chart House restaurant in Montara, which has lost about 40 percent of its customers since the storm-damaged highway was closed in January.

"We're hiring more people," said Todd Bernhard, Chart House general manager. "We're buying more (food and beverages). We've got to have enough."

Peggy Beckett, a co-owner of Huck Finn Sportfishing at Pillar Point Harbor, hopes for an increase in walk-in business for cold drinks, snacks, gifts and bait.

While walk-in business has declined since the highway's closure, Beckett said the salmon and rockfish charter boat booking side of the business had been fine.

Ellen Gartside, a park aide at the James V. Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach, expects many visitors at the tide pools this weekend. "The people who want to get here know what a great place it is," she said. "It's been pretty busy here all week, and with the (Fourth of July) holiday we anticipate the usual zoo."

Before motorists started driving to and from the coast, the reopening of the highway was hailed at the ceremony by officials from Caltrans and local elected officials.

Work on the $1.5 million construction job to reinforce the 170-foot stretch of the highway at Devils Slide began in early May. Crews from Pavex Construction Co. of Redwood City worked seven days a week to complete the job before the July 4 deadline.

Project manager Marlin Murray said the company would probably have some kind of celebration to thank the workers later. Now, he said, the reward for them is to rest.

The repair is viewed as only a temporary solution to the geological instability of Devils Slide, which has been slipping into the ocean for decades.

Caltrans wants to build an inland bypass through McNee Ranch State Park, a proposal that is unacceptable to the Sierra Club. Lately, some local residents have been advocating the building of a tunnel under Devils Slide as a solution.

Two motorists, who won raffles sponsored by the chambers of commerce of Half Moon Bay and Pacifica, were the first to drive on the highway, breaking through a butcher-paper banner stretched across the highway that proclaimed "The Coast is Clear" .

Although the ceremony was closed to the public because of a lack of parking, several tunnel advocates managed to show up by hiking or bicycling on trails near a road on McNee Ranch State Park where the bypass is proposed.

"It's a beautiful route right now," Pacifica resident Richard Shafer said of the McNee Ranch Road before pedaling off toward Montara to be the first cyclist to use the reopened highway.&lt;